Commodity Money
Before the advent of the 7–8th century CE, Japan used commodity money for its exchanges. It generally consisted of material that was compact, easily transportable and had a widely recognized value. Commodity money was a great improvement over simple barter, in which commodities were simply exchanged against others. Ideally, commodity money had to be widely accepted, easily portable and storable, and easily combined and divided in order to correspond to different values. The main items of commodity money in Japan were arrowheads, rice grains and gold powder, as well as hemp cloth.
This contrasted somewhat with countries like China, where one of the most important item of commodity money came from the Southern seas: shells. Since then however, the shell has become a symbol for money in many Chinese and Japanese ideograms.
Read more about this topic: Japanese Currency
Famous quotes containing the words commodity and/or money:
“For things to have value in man’s world, they are given the role of commodities. Among man’s oldest and most constant commodity is woman.”
—Ana Castillo (b. 1953)
“Johnny Clay: You like money. You got a great big dollar sign there where most women have a heart. So play it smart. Stay in character and you’ll have money. Plenty of it. George’ll have it and he’ll blow it on you. Probably buy himself a five-cent cigar.
Sherry Peatty: You don’t know me very well, Johnny. I wouldn’t think of letting George throw his money away on cigars.”
—Stanley Kubrick (b. 1928)